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Principles

April 11, 2010

One of the more interesting aspects of column writing is reading the comments and critiques send in by readers. It is often a learning moment. An opportunity to gain new perspective on an issue, or learn about a new source of information or data.

On the other hand, when reading the comments, some times I wonder if the person commenting had really read the column or post. Their comments seem to be totally disconnected from the subject, or they just flat out could not understand what was written.

In some case that may be the column writers fault, not writing clearly enough for the intellectual capacity of the reader. Therefore, to help the reader blog writers often provide links to background material, or material with a different, or supporting perspective. The power of interactive writing on the Internet.

Gloria ZaneOK. Any volunteers? Who’s going to stand in as the scale for this debate, just to give proper perspective to the triviality of it all. I mean, wake up. Russ wrote on his blog — just today! — about how George wrote on his blog about singularity, and about how the Wall Street Journal really made it all interesting and understandable to George. George says we’re going to have machines for slaves! I mean, can Howard the Meter Reader really compete with that?

In fact George’s article on the Singularity, here, was about machines enslaving man. Ms. Zane missed the point by 180 degrees. Machines enslaving man was the whole theme of the article, how could Ms. Zane miss the point George was trying to make? George added the WSJ article to give some perspective for the reader, not for George's understanding. One has to wonder what Ms Zane was reading, or maybe the more important questions what was she drinking or inhaling while reading Georges blog and then writing the above comment?

April 10, 2010

For the visual learners Ray Kurzweil, Singularity University, gave a talk on the coming singularity at TED. The YouTube video is here.

YouTube has a library of singularity videos by Ray Kurzweil. If you visit the link above, there will be list of singularity videos on the right side of the screen. Or, just use the search function.

My first use of Twitter was to follow the presentations at the Singularity Summit last year. Through twitter I could link to some of the presentations and down load them to my laptop. Not the same as attending the Summit, but a window on this exciting field of investigation and learning.

Update #1 (04-10-10): George has posted his column at Rebane's Ruminations with a graphic and additional information from the WSJ.